Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)
Walter Landry writes:
> Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> > This example seems to indicate that your main problem with the
> > validator is that it seems like a programmatic restriction. If it
> > were made more clear that this is not the case, would this satisfy
> > you? How would you change it?
>
> It would satisfy me, but I can't think of a wording that will likely
> satisfy the LaTeX people. The only place where you can really say
> that something is only for people, and not for machines, is in
> something that machines don't read (e.g. comments). Beyond that, you
> get into things that aren't really part of the program (e.g. don't
> call the "thing" LaTeX).
well, I tried to give a rewrite in the other post (which can surely be
improved) --- but it is certainly something that is passed through the program
to reach the user, but this is also true for, say, GPL 2c.
as the LaTeX-format has a facility to inform the user if something has been
changed from being an unmodified version of a work, we want that this facility
is not misused to misrepresent itself _to the user_ that it is the original
work. I can accept that DFSG requires that a modified work can used in place
of an original work if so intended by the user and we try to accomodate that
(in fact we never tried to prevent that) but not that _the user_ is
deliberately fooled.
it it helps one could probably make that even more explicit in 5.a.2 by adding
something like explicitly restricts it to facilities those only functions are
to pass information to the user.
frank
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